Jews as Black Allies

“I think maybe we’ve been silent for a while and now need to start speaking again.”

(Update: Scroll down for archive recordings of the panel discussion)

Rachel Amaru is a member of a new activist group in Boulder rooted in the Jewish Community.

JABA (Jews As Black Allies) which has been mobilized by and in collaboration with the Black Lives Matter Movement and Denver Freedom Riders. Amaru says Jews played an important role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and she says the Jewish community needs to get more involved in the current civil rights movement – the Black Lives Matter movement “there’s a sense that you have to speak out and you have to be there for people and I think that’s a core part of Judaism, in terms of social justice and activism.”

JABA is holding its first event on Thursday, May 28th from 7-9pm at Congregation Nevei Kodesh, 1925 Glenwood Drive, Boulder. A panel discussion “Will I Be Silent?”: Understanding the New Jim Crow is a basic and intense education on the Black Lives Matter Movement and police brutality, with a focus on the panelists’ individual experiences, in the context of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

This event is aimed at members of the larger Boulder County faith community and public who equally either want to become allies to the Black Lives Matter movement or feel unaware of the national and local experience of systemic racism.

Radio Bookclub

This month, instead of inviting the author to join us in the studio, we’ll speak with Michelle Dotter, the editor and publisher of Dzanc Books, on Thursday December 27th at 9am. Michelle acquired and edited this literary debut.